View from the Top

Rumours of an Ipod powered mobile phone are rife on the tech forums, Steve Jobs once again hinted as to what the joint power of Apple and Motorola could accomplish during his speech at MacWorld San Francisco 2005. The two companies have re kindled a relationship formed when Motorola was still in the semiconductor business, they were tapped repeatedly as a chip supplier for Apple's computers and Job's has hinted at a Moto phone with iTunes software being released soon.

Will this fire that starting gun on the next round of convergence? I for one won't mind that too much, the sooner I can have just one device and not an MP3 player, Phone and PDA the better, my excuse about needing to put on weight to provide additional circumference to clip gadgets onto my belt is running a bit thin.

I've also been keeping an eye on the march of the media centre PC, at present it seems to be a way of extorting some more cash out of the unwary with poor quality components wrapped in a seductive case, but anyone who witnessed Mr Gates speech at CES will testify Microsoft will take over the living room or die trying!

The latest version of windows operating system for media centre's is a very viable platform to create an all controlling entertainment unit for the home, it's a far cry from the days of Maggie Philbin on Tomorrows world but the ideal of a unified home server still lives on.

So don't be surprised if you start to hear a magical phrase you thought had passed into obscurity "the portal" a place where all of your media is available to be used through whatever unified gadget you have (home or portable). Of course those visionaries who championed the Portal concept have long since been flushed down the Thames after the dotcom boom, leaving the way open for Apple, MSN and Yahoo to claim the turf.

Like Richard Trevithick the real inventor of the steam locomotive, those who pioneered the media portal will be able to look back with a warm feeling in the darkened slacks safe in the knowledge that only they will ever know.

Onwards and Upwards......LP

February's Highlights

	iMate SP3i Smartphone Review The office in your pocket without needing to go to Rick Waller's tailor, we got a chance to play with the new iMate SP3i Smartphone. The Windows Mobile 2003 powered device may be smaller than a P910 or the brick like Nokia Communicator but it still has a full feature set...
	Archos Gmini XS200 Big on disk capacity and small on price, if you can live without the extras like FM tuners and voice recorders, Archos have released a cut down MP3 player the Gmini XS200 we took it for a test drive...
	CoPilot Live 5 for Smartphone Navigation from your mobile, we tested the CoPilot version design for MS powered Smartphones to see if the small screen and low powered speaker of a smartphone can really deliver enough ooomph for a navigation platform.
	Sony XDR-M1 Sony's baby DAB radio makes it break from cover, but beyond the undoubted style is there anything new to justify the usual hefty Sony price tag?

Competitions

We often get to keep the sample gadgets sent to us by companies and PR agencies and being the generous bunch of chaps we are, we've decided to give these away each month as part of our competition. Now we could have simple GMTV style questions or premium rate phones lines, but put simply we're too busy playing with new kit.

So instead everyone who is subscribed to the Lordpercy.com mailing list will automatically be entered into the draw for any competitions we run, nice and simple, you'll be contacted via email should you be the lucky winner!

We hope to get this underway during March so tell all your friends about our mailer...

If you want to contact us about anything you can email us  info@lordpercy.com we always try to answer within 24hrs.

Featured Section

The vast majority of emails to the team this month have been about the Ipod Shuffle and alternate devices, so we've rounded up the 2 more options that don't have the Apple branding, oh and the Shuffle itself :)

 

	Rio Forge the Rio Forge seems to have been overlooked by many technology sites in favour of it's bigger brother the Carbon, but for sheer gadget value this one is hard to beat especially with it's SD / MMC card slot allowing the onboard memory to be easily expanded.
	Cowon IAudio 4 512mb Possibly one of the most fashion conscious gadgets on the street the IAudio 4 is not just a pretty face, but at least it has one unlike the Apple.
	Ipod Shuffle MP3 Player The Ipod is back in a new guise, the Ipod shuffle is a flash based MP3 player with 512mb or 1gb of storage and a very minimalist control surface.